Baseball drops ball in game of catch with kids

OTHER VIEWS

July 7, 2007|By Chris Lamb, Special to the Sentinel

Joey Boyd of Mount Pleasant, S.C., wanted to introduce his 4-year-old son to baseball, just as his father had introduced him to the game. When Boyd was a young boy, his father signed him up for the Detroit Tigers fan club. A few days later, Boyd received a baseball card of Tiger pitcher Mark Fidrych and a Detroit T-shirt.

It didn't matter that Fidrych was a one-season wonder or that the T-shirt was three sizes too big.

"I couldn't have cared less," Boyd said. "I was hooked on baseball."

As Boyd grew up, his love for baseball didn't change -- though, at some point, he put away the Tigers T-shirt for Yankee pinstripes. He recently wanted to find a team for his son, William. He learned, however, that the Yankees charged an annual fee of $26 for membership in the team's fan club.

Boyd was disappointed, but he shouldn't have been surprised. The Yankees, after all, are the Yankees, where money talks louder than a Bronx cheer. Boyd then searched other teams' Web sites. He found only two teams -- the Chicago White Sox and Florida Marlins -- that didn't put a price on loyalty.

After Boyd and his son wrote the White Sox and Marlins, Boyd wrote Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig. Boyd asked Selig to encourage Major League owners to not charge kids who wanted to join a team's fan club. This, Boyd wrote, would pay off for baseball because it would draw countless kids into what he called "a wonderful sport."

Selig responded by saying, "I will certainly discuss this matter with the clubs at Major League meetings." He included an autographed baseball.

If an autographed baseball from Selig doesn't make a lifelong baseball fan of William Boyd, what can? But there are millions of 4- and 5-year-olds out there, including my son, David, and Selig is, after all, just one man.

Selig and team owners will probably get together during Major League Baseball's All-Star Break. How much time will be spent on making lifelong fans of young boys and girls? Probably none. Selig and owners will have more important things on their minds -- such as discussing the billions of dollars baseball will receive from television contracts, or the hundreds of millions the game will receive from luxury boxes and naming rights to ballparks.

One can't blame Selig and owners for ignoring 4- and 5-year-olds. Very few kids, after all, can afford luxury boxes. That's just one of the problems with today's kids.

What would be the cost of teams offering free memberships to kids? As Boyd suggested in his letter to Selig, baseball stands to lose far more money if it continues to ignore its fan base of the future. If current trends continue, it's likely that the baseball fan of the future will be a football or a basketball fan.

A recent Harris Poll revealed that baseball has seen its popularity drop extensively over the past 20 years. In 1985, 23 percent of adult Americans said that baseball was their favorite sport. In 1992, the figure was 21 percent. In 1998, it was 18 percent. Today, it is 14 percent. Baseball is taking a particular hit among younger fans. Young African-Americans, in particular, have all but given up on the national game.

Baseball may appear anachronistic in the fast-paced, MTV-immediate-gratification world. And yet in baseball, more than any other sport, there's a particular rhythm that connects the past and present with stories, rituals, hope, joy and heartbreak. Baseball is as timeless as fathers playing catch with their sons or daughters. But baseball will continue to lose its grip on America unless it can find a way to play catch with 4- and 5-year-olds.